When forging large structural parts for aerospace and similar applications, the total force of the forging press generally places an upper limit on the plan area of the workpiece. Once this upper limit of plan area has been reached for a given available press, the formation of structural parts of larger sizes generally requires that the part be forged in separate pieces and then assembled into a finished large part. The increasing sophistication of aircraft design and other similar technologies has increased the demand for larger and larger structural parts. On the other hand, the limit on the economic availability of large-force forging presses and the serious economic and practical problems of joining smaller subelements together to form large forged pieces have created serious difficulties in manufacturing large forged structural parts. These and other difficulties experienced by the prior art have been obviated in a novel manner by the present invention.
It is, therefore, an outstanding object of the present invention to provide a system for increasing the size of workpieces which can be manufactured in a given forging press.
Another object of this invention is to provide a system by which a given workpiece can be forged using a smaller capacity forging press.
With these and other objects in view, as will be apparent to those skilled in the art, the invention resides in the combination of parts set forth in the specification and covered by the claims appended hereto.